...Rolex Spotting...
The Six Million Dollar Man
If you know the highly iconic 1970s words, they are permanently embedded in the back of your mind. Say them with me:
Steve Austin, Astronaut. A man barely alive...
Oscar Goldman: Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better... stronger... faster...
When was the last time you read a story or watched a documentary that was so bad, it was great? You are either going to absolutely love this story, or think it is completely ridiculous. So let's hop in the Rolex Time Machine and take a trip back to yesteryear to explore Rolex watches in the world of The Six Million Dollar Man...
Steve Austin with Oscar Goldman
I was born in 1966, and when the Six Million Dollar Man debuted in the mid 1970s, I was only 8 years old, and it was next level stuff, like Star Wars. In other words, it was THE BOMB!!! If you grew up as a kid watching Steve Austin as The Six Million Dollar Man, you will probably love this story, and particularly the AMAZING DOCUMENTARY seen below. If you are 22 years old, and a fan of great documentaries, you will probably appreciate the video below.
When I examine The Six Million Dollar Man TV show today that originally aired in the 1970s, I paradoxically find it to be so bad, campy an and kitschy, that I love it. In other words, it's so bad, it's good...you get it. Also, it's so fascinating, otherworldly and multi-faceted on so many different levels, I can't seem to get enough!?!!
If you are not familiar with The Six Million Dollar Man, the premise of the show is based upon a super-competent Apollo Astronaut, Steve Austin, who had traveled to the moon, later tested a prototype aircraft for NASA and experienced a terrible crash that almost killed him. The government decided to save Steve by making him the first Bionic Man at a cost of $6 Million around 1972. Steve's bionic legs are nuclear powered as is his bionic arm as well as a bionic eye that can see way beyond a normal a human eye. In other words, Steve is the first cyborg.
Steve is an extremely handsome, charismatic, masculine ladies man. He is bold, tall, dark, handsome and highly athletic, and typically aloof discreet, kind of like Rolex. So basically, he is like a James Bond secret agent super-spy that regularly goes on special missions coupled with an America Indiana Jones kind of high action character living in a sci-fi future world—which almost sounds Blade Runneresque. Steve is also a very hip dresser, with a propensity for casual leisure clothing, including track suits that show of his harry chest. He is a hardcore male chauvinist, and by today's standards would be considered to be politically incorrect on many levels.
If you are a regular reader of Jake's Rolex World you probably know I regularly take opportunities to wander off the reservation to explore the history of the Kings of Cool. This would included my entire series of Profiles-in-Coolness with stories on ultra-cool dudes, like, Steve McQueen, Elvis Presley, Miles Davis, Paul Newman, James Coburn, James Bond, Robert Redford, or even Cary Grant, all of which wore Rolex watches. It helps if they wore Rolex watches, but what about when a really cool dude existed, who is not known to have worn a Rolex? That is what this story is about.
What about Rolex Hotness!?!! I don't think there was any Rolex Hotness that was more gorgeous than Lee Majors real life wife, Farah Fawcett Majors, along with her famous sidekicks on Charlies Angels.
When I recently watched this amazing documentary, on Lee Majors, as Steve Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man, not only did I come up empty handed, (no pun intended :-), as I kept hoping to find a Rolex on his wrist, but I was wrist-watch-checking every other person in documentary, and I did discover some people wearing Rolex watches. On a side note, it is clear I have a bizarre habit in that I can't seem to watch any form of video without carefully examining each character to see if they are wearing a Rolex :-)
Of course, while I was 'Rolex Spotting', so to speak, I notice a number of people who I didn't see rocking a Rolex, but knew they did, like Jack Klugman, as an example. I could not help but notice Sonny Bono rocking his Mocha GMT-Maste, along with a funkadelic Elvis collar like denim leisure suit with gold chains as pictured below:
Greg Morris of Mission Impossible fame is pictured below, and from the documentary kinda looks like he is rocking a Rolex, but I can't make a 100% positive ID:
I noticed Robert Loggia rocking what appears to be a Rolex Datejust as seen below from the Six Million Dollar Man Documentary...
